Effective software development and delivery

perspective

Today I came across a coupon from Dole inviting me to enter a contest, the Big Apple Giveaway. I wondered what the prizes were. Probably iPads, iPods, or other Apple products, I guessed.

Suddenly I realized the contest wasn’t a Big <pause/> Apple Giveaway. It was a Big Apple <pause/> Getaway. Not giveaway, but getaway, as in travel. And not Apple, the company, but "The Big Apple," New York City.

I suppose I could have taken the hint, as the I in "Big" took the shape of a silhouette of the Statue of Liberty. Not an Apple logo, as far as I know. Not yet, anyway. But it just didn’t register at first.

I felt an oddly disorienting sense of being out of phase with reality for a moment. It reminded me of an incident several years ago, when a colleague came to work and told us that she had called a plumber the previous evening, and could not think of any way to describe her problem other than to say, "My kitchen sink is down."

The plumber didn’t quite know what to make of it. "What do you mean, down? Did it fall through the counter-top?"

"No, it just, like, you know, doesn’t, like, work."

I wonder of you’ve had any "geek moments" like those; moments when your computer-oriented mentality scrapes rudely against the hard sides of normality’s box? Or is it just me?